Troubled History Emerges for Suspect in Fatal Oakland Attack

The police in Oakland searched an estuary for the gun believed to have been used in the shootings.Credit
Jim Wilson/The New York Times

OAKLAND, Calif. — In the tightly knit Korean-American community here, bound by membership at churches and a striving for academic excellence, One L. Goh had long found himself on the periphery. After leaving an apartment in Virginia without paying his rent two years ago, he returned to the Bay Area, where he had lived earlier and where his ailing father still resided.

In his early 40s, battling debt, Mr. Goh began studying nursing at Oikos University, a small college founded by an evangelical Korean pastor in an industrial area near the Oakland airport. But he showed little interest in religion and, after half a year at the school, dropped out following problems with some classmates, a school official said.

On Monday, Mr. Goh, 43, a naturalized American born in South Korea, went back to the college, the authorities said, apparently harboring a grudge against a school administrator who happened not to be at work that day. Armed with a semiautomatic handgun, he killed seven people, including two Korean-Americans, and wounded three more, said the police, who added that he had said his intention was to kill as many people at the school as he could.

On Wednesday, Mr. Goh is scheduled to be arraigned on charges of murder, attempted murder and kidnapping, the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office said.

The shooting, with echoes of the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre, in which a South Korean student killed 32 people, has shaken Korean-Americans in the area who belong to some 300 Korean churches and pick neighborhoods based on their schools’ standing.

A block from the school, at the office of The Korea Times, a Korean-language daily, its president, Michael Kang, said he and other Korean businessmen held a prayer meeting on Tuesday morning.

“As a community we felt regret that we hadn’t taken care of him before this thing happened,” said Mr. Kang, a friend of the school’s founder. “We felt that someone should have taken care of him with God’s help.” According to the school, more than half of its students are Korean or Korean-American.

The gun that was used had been tossed into an estuary by Mr. Goh before he surrendered, the police said, and a search was under way to recover it.

One of those killed was Lydia Sim, 21, a nursing student who lived in Hayward, Calif., and was the eldest daughter of a delivery truck driver and a waitress, said her cousin Hannah Lee.

Ms. Sim’s grandmother came from South Korea, and now three generations of the family live in the Bay Area. “She was a hard worker,” Ms. Lee said. “She was a good, dutiful daughter to her parents and a loyal sister to her younger brother.”

Like many Korean-Americans, Ms. Sim and her family centered their social lives on their church. They were active in the Hayward Korean Baptist Church, and they were first alerted about the shooting by a pastor there, Ms. Lee said.

“She grew up in the church,” said Ms. Lee of her cousin. “She loved God and her family. She was very active in the church.”

The authorities were trying to piece together the events that might have led to the shootings. Officer Johnna Watson, a spokeswoman for the Oakland police, said the handgun used in the attack was bought legally by Mr. Goh this year.

Mr. Goh told the police that he had gone to the school looking specifically for the administrator. Not finding her, he took another school official hostage and took her into the nursing classroom, Officer Watson said.

Photo

An officer enters the school, which is tied to a Korean-American church.Credit
Noah Berger/Associated Press

He ordered the students to line up against a wall, but before they could he started shooting them one by one, Officer Watson said. Six women and one man were killed. Mr. Goh then went to other classrooms looking for additional victims before fleeing in a car he stole from a student, Officer Watson said.

It was not clear why he had sought the administrator.

“He was very upset,” Officer Watson said. “He had been teased by his classmates because his English was not very good and that angered him; he says that made him very mad.”

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A school official who answered the cellphone of the school founder, Jong-in Kim, denied that Mr. Goh had been teased because of his poor English. More than half the student body has imperfect command of English, said the official, who asked not to be identified because the university had not authorized him to speak about the matter.

Last fall, Mr. Goh was involved in “minor things” with other classmates, the official said. But after the school looked into the matter, officials concluded that it was not serious.

“He wasn’t showing any signs of violence or anything toward anyone,” the official said. “He didn’t show any mental illness. He seemed like a regular, ordinary guy. He was quiet.”

Nevertheless, Mr. Goh dropped out of the school, the official said.

Though called a university, Oikos is a small institution with a few hundred students. The founder, Mr. Kim, established the school about a decade ago, changing its name a few times, said Nam Hong, the editor in chief of The Korea Times. Oikos means “house” in ancient Greek. Mr. Kang, the newspaper’s president and founder’s friend, said Mr. Kim had established the nursing school to support the school’s department of religion.

The school is affiliated with the Praise God Korean Church, one of the many independent Korean churches that have mushroomed in the Bay Area, Mr. Hong said.

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Emergency responders near the scene of a shooting at Oikos University in Oakland.Credit
Jim Wilson/The New York Times

Mr. Goh’s troubles at the school came after he had suffered from significant financial problems in Virginia, including an inability to pay his rent while he lived in Hayes, Va., in 2008 and 2009, according to a court employee and records at the Gloucester General District Court.

The owner of the Yorkview Apartments, where Mr. Goh had been renting an apartment for $575 a month since November 2007, filed a complaint against him eight months after he moved in. Mr. Goh had fallen two months behind paying rent, according to court documents.

In July 2009, about one year after that complaint was recorded, the authorities issued a criminal summons for back rent on the one-bedroom apartment, but Mr. Goh had apparently already moved out. When the authorities were unable to locate him, he was found in contempt of court in August 2009.

Mr. Goh, according to court records, also failed to pay a credit card bill to Capital One, and in December 2011 he was ordered to pay the company $985 in a civil judgment. It is not clear whether he ever paid that debt.

What is more, Mr. Goh’s brother, Su Wan Ko, 31, an Army sergeant, died in a traffic accident in March 2011 in Carroll County, Va., an Army spokesman said.

Sergeant Ko, a human resource specialist, had served in Iraq, said Raymond Gall, the spokesman. He was attached to the 10th Special Forces Group based in Fort Carson, Colo., but was not himself a special operations soldier.

After returning to the Bay Area, Mr. Goh appeared to have led an unsettled life. It was not clear where he lived, though he had registered his address in the same apartment complex where his father lives, Westlake Christian Terrace, a Department of Housing and Urban Development facility.

Mr. Goh did not live at the complex, which is reserved for senior citizens, said the administrator, Janice Williams.

Nobody answered the door at the apartment belonging to Mr. Goh’s father, Young Nam Ko. A neighbor, Norma Wesley, 86, said the father rarely ventured outside. “I never saw the son,” Ms. Wesley said.

Correction: April 3, 2012

An earlier version of this article, in some instances, misspelled the surname of the accused shooter. It is One L. Goh, not Koh.

A version of this article appears in print on April 4, 2012, on Page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Troubled History Emerges For Suspect in Fatal Attack. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe